


what are we, but the forward-facing phantoms of our past selves?

by deathrae



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: DA:I Spoilers, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Phantom Limb Pain, Trespasser Spoilers, exploration of trauma, in case he shows up again in the future, karrael lavellan, predominately diplomatic inquisitor with some sass, sorta?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 20:53:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5063695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathrae/pseuds/deathrae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some hurts are harder to heal than most, emotional or physical. Some things are regained, but some are lost forever... though the body often remembers, even when the mind does not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what are we, but the forward-facing phantoms of our past selves?

Dreaming felt different, after so many trips in and out of the Fade. Not that the dreams themselves were terribly different, only the details changed now and then, but the Fade felt warped around him now. More so, when Inquisitor Lavellan had still borne the Anchor. Now, though, his dreams felt like walking through craters, his footfalls slowly filling them back in... or perhaps carving them deeper.

The Fade held few things now that could frighten him, after so many victories, but from time to time, it still caught him up in its deceptions.

The Crossroads sprawled out before him in a tangle of broken roads and circuitous stone paths. He took stock of himself, patting down his chest, checking his gear. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, at first, other than the vague sense of misalignment that so often came with dreams.

Lavellan drew his staff and tapped it along the path before him, testing for loose stones or drop-away edges. Something tugged at him, drawing him to the right, to a long, wandering path framed by statues of Fen’Harel. Lavellan flinched, sighing faintly at his own foolishness before continuing.

As he walked beneath the first pair of wolves, their eyes glowed green, and they stood, staring down at him. Judging him.

One of them shifted, weight braced low, and the other rose up taller, straighter, its mouth cracking open with a sound like ancient grinding gears, its voice weathered and torn like gravel.

_Halt, Inquisitor-Herald of the Adrift Elvhen. You are unwelcome here._

The crouched wolf reared back, paws bared as if to strike, and Lavellan dragged a barrier up over himself on instinct. The great wolf’s paws came down on either side of him, shattering the stone path and sending him tumbling into the abyss of space below.

He snapped awake, struggling against his bedroll and flailing like a child as he searched for stability.

“Your Worship?” A soldier set a hand on his shoulder, the flap of his tent fluttering shut from the disturbance of her entrance.

Lavellan sat up and threw the cover of his bedroll aside, only belatedly settling his nerves. “It’s nothing,” he said, after a conspicuously long pause, and he attempted a smile. “Thank you. I apologize if I alarmed you.”

“Of course, Your Worship,” the soldier said, withdrawing again.

He hated camping. Truthfully, he always had.

 

They were once twelve. Thirteen, with him at the fore. Then one by one, they became fewer. Diminished, but not _less_. First the wolf. Then the advisors. Then the others, until it was only two.

They did not see each other as often as either would have preferred, but they made do. As they had always done. Stolen moments in hallways in full armor. Whispered words at crossroads where their paths met and diverged.

But now and then, they risked a little more time. They stole a few extra moments.

And for that reason, Inquisitor Lavellan, twice-over savior of Thedas in general and the south in particular, braved the camp-to-camp life and wandered off the beaten paths to a remote compound in the Hunterhorn Mountains, where a new order, smaller than his own had once been and smaller still compared to what the Inquisition had become, was being reborn like a phoenix, resurrected in the ashes of its former incarnation.

Every time he visited, he noticed, the fledgling Seekers had just a few more feathers.

“They are coming along nicely,” was all Cassandra would say when they went out walking among the new ranks. She introduced them to him, one by one, and she knew them all by name, even now, even though their numbers doubled every time he came back. “How do you find them?” she asked him more than once, not desperate for approval, yet... looking for validation. It was an attempt not to seem unspeakably pleased, but he knew. He saw through her better than most, she admitted, when he told her as much. She laughed, and jabbed an elbow into his side in payback, but she admitted it all the same.

When their workdays finally ended, their duties accounted for, they’d settle beside the fire in their shared cabin. No one made rules, no one set the schedule, but like clockwork, she would step away to rinse their few dishes. He would step up behind her, elven footfalls like cats’ paws without his boots. His voice on a soft “May I help?” would make her jump, and then she’d shoo him away, insisting he would benefit from some rest after being up and about all day. He would sigh, conceding defeat, and settle on the small sofa. She would wander over after a moment or two, just long enough to not seem quite so desperate, and then she would sit, and curl herself into the circle of his good arm.

“You know me too well, my love,” she said of it then, as her fingers traced a familiar path down the outer seam of his trousers, counting the stitches on the leather as if she wanted the reassurance that he was wearing properly thick clothes. _Elf blood or no_ , she had said on a prior visit, _I will not have your ears freezing off in this damn cold!_

“After all this time,” he mused, just a touch of a lilt to his voice to betray his own amusement, “I would be very concerned if I _didn’t_ know you so well as this.”

“Hush!” she said, slapping a hand to his knee in reproach, but she laughed, and he reveled in the warmth of the sound. He enjoyed this version of her, the one that laughed readily and with nothing but joy in her heart, the one that had dispensed with much of her doubt and replaced it with faith and unshakeable confidence.

The cabin is as much a home as he’s likely to have these days, and he adores it all the more for that. It’s not over-large, but it’s just the right size for a battle-scarred warrior and her mage, and it feels welcoming in a way that Skyhold so often didn’t. The walls are a dark, warm wood that soaks in the light and holds it in like clay, and the floor... he supposes it might be stone, but it’s lined with so many thick, soft furs that he isn’t actually sure _what_ it is. Their bed is perhaps not so luxurious as the one he’d had as Inquisitor, but after all, it isn’t the trappings that make a house a home... nor does a mattress make a bed.

Even now, so many years after the immediate threats have calmed, their actions are largely driven by what they choose to believe is healthy paranoia. Despite her Seekers’ able-bodied sentries and despite even their own well-sharpened senses, Cassandra’s sword is not displayed artistically on a wall, but rather is sheathed, lying on the floor just under the bed, where only a half-second’s reach down would bring it to hand. He leans his staff against the wall and a side table, and while this staff is rather less ornate than some of the ones he wielded in his days of rift-sealing and demon-fighting, it’s just as reliable.

Despite all this, she often fell asleep with her head on his chest, as if the low thudding drumbeat of his heart was not enough to dull her hearing to a point she found worrying. It was comfortable. Warm. Only with her did he relax fully as he slept.

For good or ill.

 

The Fade was hyper-true to life that night. The only indication that it was not reality, in fact, was the strange-but-familiar heft of his left hand, restored as if by some arcane trick. He examined his palm, and there were green etchings like cracks running up under his sleeve, scars he recalled all too well. He tugged the sleeve back down to cover most of them and turned his hand away again, frowning. It was the Hunterhorns this time, the thick spring grass green and dense under his bare feet, the trees bowed away from him in the distance, blown by a wind that brought the scent of rams and birds further down the hills. The compound sprawled around him, but empty. Eerie.

Quiet.

“You’ve become complacent.”

Lavellan spun, searching for the owner of that all too familiar voice.

“Solas,” he said, the name coming out as little more than a breath as he scanned the treeline, the cliffs, the buildings. “Why–?”

A breath against his ear.

He spun around again, and Solas stood just behind him, dressed as he had always been in Skyhold, the familiar jawbone hanging from his neck. Lavellan stumbled back a step, struggling to catch a full breath, and Solas’ own words seemed to echo as words brought forth by his memory rather than the Solas standing before him.

_The Fade reflects the minds of the living. If you expect a spirit of wisdom to be a pride demon, it will adapt._

And as if it had only been a trick of the light, the familiar clothes melted away, replaced by Fen’Harel’s armor and furs from the ruins.

“I must admit, I am surprised,” Solas said, stepping to the side, falling to a comfortable circle around Lavellan, and though he was again wearing that soft, sympathetic smile, the visual of a wolf stalking its prey did not escape him.

“By what, exactly?” he asked, stifling the desire to reach for a staff he wasn’t even wearing.

“You’ve gotten comfortable here, haven’t you?” Solas asked, his hands tucked together at the small of his back, though his shoulders rose on a falsely casual shrug. “It’s a good life here, that you could live, if you set aside the Inquisition altogether.”

“I told you,” he said, turning to keep track of Solas. “We’re going to stop you. We’re going to prove you’re wrong about this world.”

Solas’ smile cracked and fell. “Indeed.”

“I can prove it to you. And I will.”

“I hope so. But until such time, we find ourselves on opposing sides.”

“We do,” he said, slow, careful even. Solas’ constant circling made him feel dizzy despite the slow pace.

“Your determination remains, then?”

He frowned. “Solas, really. What’s this about?”

“I wanted to see if…” Solas stopped, finally, his gaze low, watching the grass. “Ah. But It matters little.”

“Of course it matters,” he said, stepping forward, raising his hands to lay them on Solas’ shoulders, bracing him, his palms resting heavy and real, he hoped, against Solas’ armor. He smiled. “Please, tell me what’s going on.”

Solas laughed, the sound somehow raw. Broken. “It is as I said then. It would be so easy, and I must not.” Solas lifted his hands, laying them over Lavellan’s. Solas’ eyes flashed dark, silver-white, and pain wracked through his hand, spreading from every point where Solas’ fingers touched. On reflex Lavellan yanked his hand away, the green cracks reopening, glowing, and an almost-forgotten agony shot up through his arm, just as before, a throbbing so sharp it sent him straight to his knees.

“I am sorry, my friend.”

 

He woke suddenly, frantic, the pain still rattling his bones, aching deep into his chest. His options to alleviate it were fewer now than ever, and he hadn’t thought to pack any pain-relieving balms since the Anchor’s removal. _Out of bed_ , he thought, his mind still a fog of confusing, unrestful sleep. He needed to be out of bed. Cold water, perhaps, though the crisp mountain air was raw and aching in his lungs already, and that was only making it worse, not better. He reached for his staff, the stunted joint of his arm knocking into the table with a thud that sent another jolt all the way up to his shoulder, and his staff slipped loose and clattered to the ground. “ _Fenedhis!_ ” he hissed, giving up on the staff and tearing himself free of the quilt. His feet slid across fur and he bowed forward, curling around his aching arm and stumbling until he hit the wall and crumpled to his knees.

Cassandra’s hands grabbing his shoulders brought a spell half-formed to the tip of his tongue before he recognized her. She shook him, her voice pitched high and tense with a fear that rang too familiar to Vir Dirthara, when the mark had grown worse by the hour. He was worrying her. _Again_. It made his chest ache.

Or was that still the mark?

“What’s wrong?” she whispered, thin and streaky with a panic she was too sleep-dazed to hide.

“It hurts,” he said, grinding the words out through a jaw clenched so tight she almost couldn’t hear him. “It hurts, _again_ , I don’t– I don’t understand–”

She cupped her hands to his face, kissed his forehead, and if it weren't for the tremor in her voice and the shake to her hands he would have thought she was perfectly calm. “Shh, my love, shh. It is gone, just as before.” She slid her hands to where his own was clenched around the remains of his arm, carefully loosening his fingers. When he let go, she took the end of his arm in her hands, rubbing and soothing with her thumbs until he could start to relax. “It’s gone. It cannot hurt you now.”

“Right,” he said slowly, after a moment, trying to merely breathe as she worked against the tension in his arm, his shoulders. “Of… of course.”

“I have heard of this,” she said, settling in a crouch in front of him. “In soldiers who lose limbs in battle. But it will get easier.”

He leaned forward, resting his forehead against hers. “Good. The last thing the Inquisition needs before setting off for Tevinter is for me to go mad.”

“As if I would let such a thing happen,” she scoffed, and he chuckled. “You think I jest!”

“I don’t,” he said, patting her hand with his. “I know you mean every word. It’s why I love you.”

“Hopefully not _just_ that,” she groused, though she did not push him away, and he laughed.

“What a picture we make,” he said after a moment, gesturing to her. “Sitting on the floor in the middle of the night.”

“Well whose fault is that?” she asked, but she looped his arm around her shoulders to heft him up to his feet. “Come. Let us get a little more rest before dawn. You are far too grouchy when you do not sleep.”

“ _I’m_ grouchy, ma vhenan?” he said, laughing, as she walked him back to bed.

Somewhere beyond the edges of the compound, a wolf howled on the wind, alone, but Lavellan paid it no mind. Instead, he listened to the soft sounds of the sentries shuffling about in the dark and the low mutter of Cassandra chastising him for his smart remarks as she crawled back into bed beside him.

The Dread Wolf could have the night. Here, he was home. Safe.

Real.

**Author's Note:**

> This was mostly born out of only belatedly grokking that Solas was a capital-D-Dreamer. Call me crazy, but the idea that the guy who's trying to destroy the world has a backdoor into the dreaming mind of ~The Inquisitor~ seems like a _massive_ security risk...


End file.
